The Abolition Crusade and Its Consequences Part 7

"Extreme men like Garrison seldom have justice done to them. It is true they may be impracticable, both as to their measures and their men, but that unmixed evil is the result of their exertions, all history of opinion in every country, I think, contradicts. Such ultra men are as necessary as the more moderate and reasonable advocates of any growing opinion; and, as _an impartial person_, who never happened to fall in with one of the party in the course of my tour, I must express my belief that the present wide diffusion of anti-slavery sentiment in the United States is, in no small degree, owing to their exertions."[40]

[40] "Notes on North America," London, 1851, vol. II, p. 486.

And Professor Smith, of Williams College, speaking of the anti-slavery feeling in the North in 1850, says:

"This sentiment of the free States regarding slavery was to a large degree the result of an agitation for its abolition which had been active for a score of years (1831-1850) without any positive results."[41]

[41] "Parties and Slavery," Smith, pp. 3, 4.

But no matter what had produced it, the anti-slavery sentiment that pervaded the North in 1850 boded ill to slavery and to the Const.i.tution, and the South was bitterly complaining. Congress met in December, 1849, and was to sit until October, 1850. Lovers of the Union, North and South, watched its proceedings with the deepest anxiety. The South was much excited. The continual torrent of abuse to which it was subjected, the refusal to allow slavery in States to be created from territory in the South-west that was below the parallel of the Missouri Compromise, and the complete nullification of the fugitive slave law, seemed to many to be no longer tolerable, and from sundry sources in that section came threats of secession.

In 1849-50 the South was demanding a division of California, an efficient fugitive slave law, and that the territories of New Mexico and Arizona should be organized with no restrictions as to slavery. Other minor demands were unimportant.

Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, Stephen A. Douglas, Lewis Ca.s.s, and other conservative leaders came forward and, after long and heated debates in Congress, the Compromise of 1850 was agreed on. To satisfy the North, California, as a whole, came in as a free State, and the slave trade was abolished in the District of Columbia. To satisfy the South, a new and stringent fugitive slave law was agreed on, and the territories of New Mexico and Arizona were organized with no restrictions as to slavery.

In bringing about this compromise, Daniel Webster was, next to Clay, the most conspicuous figure. He was the favorite son of New England and the greatest statesman in all the North. On the 7th of March, 1850, Mr.

Webster made one of the greatest speeches of his life on the Compromise measures. Rising above the sectional prejudices of the hour, he spoke for the Const.i.tution and the Union. The manner in which he and his reputation were treated by popular historians in the North, for half a century afterward, on account of this speech, is the most pathetic and, at the same time, the most instructive story in the whole history of the anti-slavery crusade.

Mr. Webster was under the ban of Northern public opinion for all this half a century, not because of inconsistency between that speech and his former avowals, an averment often made and never proven, but because he was consistent. He stood squarely upon his record, and the venom of the a.s.saults that were afterward made upon him was just in proportion to the love and veneration which had been his before he offended. His offence was that he would not move with the anti-slavery movement.[42] He did not stand with his section in a sectional dispute.

[42] McMaster says: "The great statesman was behind the times."--"Webster," p. 19.

Henry Clay, old and feeble, had come back into the Senate to render his last service to his country. He was the author of the Compromise. Daniel Webster was everywhere known as the champion of the Union. Henry Clay was known as the "Old Man Eloquent," and he now spoke with all his old-time fire; but Webster's great speech probably had more influence on the result.

Before taking up Mr. Webster's speech his previous att.i.tude toward slavery must be noted. The purpose of the friends of the Union was, of course, to effect a compromise that would, if possible, put an end to sectional strife. Compromise means concession, and a compromise of political differences, made by statesmen, may involve some concession of view previously held by those who advocate as well as by those who accept it. Webster thought his section of the Union should now make concessions.

Fanaticism, however, concedes nothing; it never compromises, although statesmanship does. One of the most notable utterances of Edmund Burke was:

"_All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter._"

Great statesmen, on great occasions, speak not only to their countrymen and for the time being, but they speak to all mankind and for all time.

So spoke Burke in that famous sentence when advocating, in the British Parliament in 1776, "conciliation with America"; and so did Daniel Webster speak, in the Senate of the United States, on the 7th of March, 1850, for "the Const.i.tution and the Union." If George III and Lord North had heeded Burke, and if the British government and people, from that day forth, had followed the wise counsels given in that speech by their greatest statesman, all the English-speaking peoples of the world, now numbering over 170,000,000, might have been to-day under one government, that government commanding the peace of the world. And if all the people of the United States in 1850 and from that time on, had heeded the words of Daniel Webster, we should have been spared the bloodiest war in the book of time; every State of the Union would have been left free to solve its own domestic problems, and it is not too much to say that these problems would have been solved in full accord with the advancing civilization of the age.

The sole charge of inconsistency against Webster that has in it a shadow of truth relates to the proposition he made in his speech as to the "Wilmot proviso." That celebrated proviso was named for David Wilmot, of Pennsylvania, its author. It provided against slavery in all the territory acquired from Mexico. The South had opposed the Wilmot proviso because the territory in question, much of it, was south of the Missouri Compromise line extended. Mr. Webster had often voted for the Wilmot proviso, as all knew. In his speech for the Compromise, by which the South was urged to and did give up its contentions as to the admission of California, and its contentions as to the slave trade in the District of Columbia, Webster argued that _the North might forego_ the proviso as to New Mexico and Arizona for the reason that the proviso was, as to these territories, _immaterial_. Those territories, he argued, would never come in as slave States, because the G.o.d of nature had so determined. Climate and soil would forbid. Time vindicated this argument. In 1861 Charles Francis Adams said, in Congress, that New Mexico, open to slave-holders and their slaves for more than ten years, then had only twelve slaves domiciled on the surface of over 200,000 square miles of her extent.[43]

[43] "Vindication of Webster," William C. Wilkinson, p. 69.

Daniel Webster's services to the cause of the Union, the preservation of which had been the pa.s.sion of his life, had been absolutely unparalleled. It is perhaps true that without him Abraham Lincoln and the armies of the Union in 1861-65 would have been impossible. The sole and, as he then stated and as time proved, immaterial concession this champion of the Union now (1850) made for the sake of preserving the Union was his proposition as to New Mexico and Arizona.

Henry Clay spoke before Webster. These words were the key-note of Clay's great speech: "In my opinion the body politic cannot be preserved unless this agitation, this distraction, this exasperation, which is going on between the two sections of the country, shall cease."

The country waited with anxiety to hear from Webster. Hundreds of suggestions and appeals went to him. Both sides were hopeful.[44]

Anti-slavery people knew his aversion to slavery. He had never countenanced anti-slavery agitation, but he had voted for the Wilmot proviso. They knew, too, that he had long been ambitious to be President, and, carried away by their enthusiasm, they hoped that Webster would swim along with the tide that was sweeping over the majority section of the Union. In view of Mr. Webster's past record, however, it would be difficult to believe that Abolitionists were really disappointed in him had we not many such proofs as the following stanza from Whittier's ode, published after the speech:

Oh! dumb be pa.s.sing, stormy rage When he who might Have lighted up and led his age Falls back in night!

[44] McMaster's "Webster."

The conservatives also were hopeful. They knew that, though Webster had always been, as an individual, opposed to slavery, he had at all times stood by the Const.i.tution, as well as the Union. At no time had he ever qualified or retracted these words in his speech at Niblo's Garden in 1839: "Slavery, as it exists in the States, is beyond the reach of Congress. It is a concern of the States themselves. They have never submitted it to Congress, and Congress has no rightful power over it. I shall concur therefore in _no act_, _no measure_, _no menace_, no indication of purpose which _shall interfere or threaten to interfere with the exclusive authority_ of the several States over the subject of slavery, as it exists within their respective limits. All this appears to me to be matter of plain imperative duty."

Nullifying the fugitive slave law was a plain "interference" with the rights of the slave States.

Mr. Webster's intent, when he spoke on the Compromise measures, is best explained by his own words, on June 17, while these measures were still pending: "Sir, my object is peace. My object is reconciliation. My purpose is not to make up a case _for the North_ or a case _for the South_. My object is not to continue useless and irritating controversies. I am against agitators, North and South, and all narrow local contests. I am an American, and I know no locality but America."

In his speech made on the 7th of March he dwelt at length on existing conditions, on the att.i.tude of the North toward the fugitive slave law, and argued fully the questions involved in the "personal liberty" laws pa.s.sed by Northern States. Referring to the complaints of the South about these, he said: "In that respect _the South, in my judgment, is right and the North is wrong_. Every member of every Northern legislature is bound by oath, like every other officer in the country, to support the Const.i.tution of the United States; and the article of the Const.i.tution which says to these States that they shall deliver up fugitives from service _is as binding in honor and conscience as any other article_. _No man fulfils his duty in any legislature who sets himself to find excuses, evasions, escapes, from this const.i.tutional obligation._"

And further on he said: "Then, sir, there are the Abolition societies, of which I am unwilling to speak, but in regard to which I have very clear notions and opinions. I do not think them useful. _I think their operations for the last twenty years have produced nothing good or valuable.... I cannot but see what mischief their interference with the South has produced._"

In these statements is the substance of Webster's offending.

Webster's speech was followed, on the 11th of March, by the speech of Senator Seward, of New York, in the same debate. Quoting the fugitive slave provision of the Federal Const.i.tution, Mr. Seward said: "This is from the Const.i.tution of the United States in 1787, and the parties were the Republican States of the Union. The law of nations _disavows such compacts; the law of nature, written on the hearts and consciences of freemen, repudiates them_."[45] The people of the North, instead of following Webster, chose to follow Seward, the apostle of a _law higher than the Const.i.tution_; and when, ten years later, it appeared to them that the whole North had given in its adhesion to the "higher law"

doctrine, the people of eleven Southern States seceded, and put over themselves in very substance the Const.i.tution that Seward had flouted and Webster had pleaded for in vain.

[45] _Congressional Globe_, 31st Congress, 1st session, Appendix, p.

263.

Anti-slavery enthusiasts in the North generally, and Abolitionists especially, in their comments on Webster's speech scouted the idea that the preservation of the Union depended upon the faithful execution of the fugitive slave law or the cessation of anti-slavery agitation.

"What," said Theodore Parker, "cast off the North! They set up for themselves! Tush! Tush! Fear boys with bugs!... I think Mr. Webster knew there was no danger of a dissolution of the Union."[46]

[46] "Vindication of Webster," William C. Wilkinson, p. 191.

The immediate effect of the speech was wonderful; congratulations poured in upon Mr. Webster from conservative cla.s.ses in every quarter, and he must have felt gratified to know that he had contributed greatly to the enactment of measures that, for a time, had some effect in allaying sectional strife. But the revilings of the Abolitionists prevailed, and it turned out that Daniel Webster, great as he was, had undertaken a task that was too much even for him. His enemies struck out boldly at once: and years afterward, when the anti-slavery movement that Webster's appeals could not arrest had culminated in secession, and when the Union had been saved by arms, the triumphant hosts of the anti-slavery crusade all but succeeded in writing Daniel Webster down permanently in the history of his country as an apostate from principle for the sake of an office he did not get. Here is their verdict, which Mr. Lodge, a biographer of Webster, pa.s.ses on into history:

"The _popular verdict_ has been given against the 7th of March speech, _and that verdict has pa.s.sed into history_. Nothing can be said or done which will alter the fact that the people of this country, _who maintained and saved the Union, have pa.s.sed judgment on Mr. Webster_, and condemned what he said on the 7th of March as _wrong in principle and mistaken in policy_."

Here are specimens of the a.s.saults that were made on Webster after his speech. They are selected from among many given by one of his biographers.[47]

[47] McMaster's "Webster," p. 316 _et seq._

"'Webster,' said Horace Mann, 'is a fallen star! Lucifer descended from Heaven.'... 'Webster,' said Sumner, 'has placed himself in the dark list of apostates.' When Whittier named him Ichabod, and mourned for him in verse as one dead, he did but express the feeling of half New England:

'Let not the land once proud of him Mourn for him now, Nor brand with deeper shame his dim Dishonored brow.

Then pay the reverence of old days To his dead fame!

Walk backward with averted gaze And hide his shame.'"

After much more to the same effect, Professor McMaster proceeds: "The attack by the press, the _expressions of horror_ that rose from New England, Webster felt keenly, but the absolute isolation in which he was left by his New England colleagues cut him to the quick."[48]

[48] Professor McMaster in the chapter preceding that containing these extracts, has collected much evidence to show that Webster aspired to be President, and the biographer ent.i.tles the chapter, "Longing for the Presidency," apparently the author's clod on the grave of a buried reputation.

On Mr. Webster's speech, its purpose and effect, we have this opinion from Mr. Lodge:

"The speech, if exactly defined, is in reality a powerful effort, not for a compromise, or for the fugitive slave law, or for any other one thing, _but to arrest the whole anti-slavery movement_, and in that way _put an end to the danger which threatened the Union and restore harmony to the jarring sections_."

And then he adds:

"_It was a mad project. Mr. Webster might as well have attempted to stay the incoming tide at Marshfield with a rampart of sand, as to check the anti-slavery movement with a speech._"